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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Explores the linguistic and cultural transformations that took place in the Commonwealth Caribbean from 17th-century slavery and bond servitude to the present day. Focus is on the extent to which Caribbean people were given or demanded the freedom to create and maintain a postcolonial Caribbean identity. We first discuss the sociohistorical conditions that led to the creation of new Caribbean languages called "pidgins" and "creoles" as the English language was transplanted from Britain to the Third World. We then explore the relationship of the English-based creoles to the social, cultural, political, and literary/expressive aspects of the contexts in which they existed and in which they continue to exist today in the Caribbean as well as in Britain and the United States. As far as possible, parallels are drawn to French- and Spanish-influenced Caribbean communities.
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4.00 Credits
Introduces the syntax of languages quite different from English, from various parts of the world. Considers what they may have in common with English and with each other and how to characterize the ways in which they differ from English and from each other.
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4.00 Credits
Introduces students to the field of cognitive science through an examination of language behavior. Begins with interactive discussions of how best to characterize and study the mind. These principles are then illustrated through an examination of research and theories related to language representation and use. Draws from research in both formal linguistics and psycholinguistics.
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4.00 Credits
An introduction to the study of the internal structure of words. The two main problems in morphology are (1) how to account for the surface variability of formatives (allomorphy) and (2) how to account for their combinatorial properties (morphosyntax). Beginning from the techniques and problems of structuralist morpheme analysis, two major approaches to allomorphy are introduced: the morpheme-based model and the word-based model. In morphosyntax, we concentrate on the question of to what extent morphological combination is a matter of syntax versus the lexicon. Emphasis is on constructing morphological hypotheses and linguistic argumentation. The assignments involve in-depth analyses of data from various languages.
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4.00 Credits
Examines signs and symbols in the communication of humans, primates, birds, computers, automata, simulata, and more and discusses definitions of such concepts as sign, symbol, intelligence, artificial intelligence, mind, cognition, and meaning. Concerns the matter expressed by the symbol systems and the manner in which the matter is expressed: literally, abstractly, metaphorically, as a simile, by insinuation, and other methods.
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4.00 Credits
Examines the diversity of language usage in modern Latin America and considers historical perspectives as to how the present situation came about. Considers the dialectology of Latin America: how and why American varieties of Spanish and Portuguese differ from European varieties, as well as the distribution and nature of dialect differences in different regions of the Americas. Examines sociolinguistic issues, such as class and ethnic differences in Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas, the origin and development of standard and nonstandard varieties, and the effects of contact with Amerindian and African languages. Considers Spanish- and Portuguese-based creoles and the question of prior creolization in the popular speech of Brazil, Cuba, and other areas with a substantial population of African descent. Other topics include bilingualism, code switching, language attitudes, the impact of contact with English, and the present status of indigenous languages.
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4.00 Credits
Deals with the relationship between cognitive organization on the one hand and the interaction Department of Linguistics between syntax and semantics in natural language. Focuses on the debate within cognitive science as to whether or not the mind is modular (divided into distinct faculties, such as language, vision, and perhaps others). Discusses the relationship of this debate to the debate within linguistics as to whether or not syntax is an autonomous component of a grammar that feeds semantics but does not depend on semantics itself for its functioning. Examines works in cognitive science about modularity and works in linguistics that bear on the question of the autonomy of syntax.
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4.00 Credits
Discusses how various writing systems relate to language and questions whether writing affects language (and if so, how). The fundamental characteristics of writing are discussed: the communicative purpose of writing, the application of graphical marks on a durable surface, and the achievement of communication by virtue of the marks' conventional relation to language. The evolution of writing is traced. Students compare the writing systems that evolved in Central America, China, Sumer, and Egypt-and their descendants-with respect to their relative advantages and disadvantages, from the points of view of acquisition, the representation of language, and the effective achievement of communication.
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4.00 Credits
We live embedded in the passage of time and conceive of time as the dimension of change. Our languages typically have various ways to refer to time, to distinguish between past and future, to describe sequences of events, and to set up temporal reasoning patterns. This course deals with the expression of time and tense in different languages and the linguistic, philosophical, and psychological questions that this investigation raises. Issues include the logic of time, temporal metaphors, different kinds of situations, presentation of situations, the semantics of tense, and time, tense, and aspect in narrative discourse.
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4.00 Credits
Advanced seminar. Investigates the nature of linguistic meaning through an examination of the semantics of sentences that report beliefs and other attitudes toward propositions, such as "Galileo believed that the earth moves." Such sentences have arguably proven problematic for all theories of meaning. We read and discuss pertinent papers by linguists and philosophers; background lectures are given on related issues, such as the semantics of proper names, pronouns, and demonstratives. Registered students are required to make two substantial class presentations and write a detailed research paper.
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